https://wccftech.com/asrock-amd-ryzen-5000-cpu-bios-support-...
Then AMD told them to stop it. Which is why that BIOS never got an official release and never appeared on ASRock's website.
There are people that have been running 5000 CPUs on ASRock for over a year now.
Conversely, you can run first gen Ryzen on B550/X570. Which many people seem to bizarrely think is impossible. Possibly due to AMD's marketing.
Or am I just thinking about an entirely different thing...?
It really does not fit the narrative of what AMD did with Zen so far, that's for sure.
https://wccftech.com/amd-warns-motherboard-makers-offering-r...
The reality is that AMD fanboys haven't woken up to the fact that AMD is no different than Intel. All the same marketing and segmenting games exist on AMD. They were the underdog and then suddenly, they are on top and acting just like Intel.
Most of the stack has a similar TDP to Zen1/Zen+/Zen2. The 5950X has the highest TDP, 105W, which is the same as the 3950X, which is allowed. In practice the 5950X actually pulls a bit less power. Furthermore, the A320 boards (even lower-end) got official support, despite a lot of those boards having utter trash VRMs.
(furthermore, there's nothing that guarantees that every A520 board has a VRM that is capable of supporting a 5950X either! it's not like board generation is some guarantee of VRM quality, there are X370 boards that can handle a 5950X and A520 boards that can't. That's not how support is determined.)
16MB bios isn't a limitation either. B450 boards are the literal exact same silicon - B350 is to B450 as Z170 is to Z270, basically, it's rebranded silicon - and B450 boards with 16MB BIOS got support. There are B450 boards with 16MB bios that support literally the entire range of chips. And once again, so did A320 boards with 16MB BIOS.
Releasing official support for A320 really just blew a hole in every retconned justification that people tried to make for AMD. It's uncouth to say it here on HN, but there really is a large number of people who are super emotionally attached to the AMD brand and willing to stretch to absurd lengths to justify what are clearly business decisions.
And now they're just reversing their previous policy. Wasn't a problem at all, actually.